


Family Secrets

by copperbadge



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Drinking, Episode Related, Family, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, fake season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-29
Updated: 2010-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:37:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto and Rhi finally manage to have Words about his new job and his new boyfriend. Predictably, nothing goes as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Family Secrets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/970367) by [ZTCX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZTCX/pseuds/ZTCX)



> This is a coda to **[Family Business](http://community.livejournal.com/tw_itallchanges/27414.html)** , the 10th episode of the Torchwood Virtual Season at the tw_itallchanges community. If you haven't read the Virtual Season, which takes place after canonical S2, essentially what you need to know is that in _Family Business_ , Rhiannon is inadvertently involved in a Torchwood investigation, leading to her discovery of Ianto's secret life and Torchwood's discovery of Ianto's secret relatives.
> 
> Warnings: Discussion of domestic violence (no portrayal). 
> 
> Beta Credit: Nick, C, Anya, Foxy, Jenny, Spider, Mandr. Dude, sometimes it takes a village.

Somewhere into their third vodka tonic, Rhi turns to Ianto and says, "So."

Until now they've mostly been talking about her, though that makes it sound less charitable than Ianto's feeling. They've been talking about family, and she just has a lot more to bring to that conversation than he does. What her kids are doing, the mischief Johnny gets up to, what she learned as a Cosmetologica saleswoman. She's been considering taking that experience and getting a job in the shops, though the kids are a bit young. Ianto feels a certain kind of wonder for the dilemmas of her life. They're not anything he's ever experienced.

But now it's his turn, and no part of what he brings to the 'family' discussion will be easy.

"Yeah?" he asks, contemplating another slice of pizza. The box on his dining table is half-full still; apparently Rhi wanted to focus on the vodka as much as he did.

"Tell me about Torchwood," she says. He supposes Torchwood is easier than Jack, at least for her. Torchwood is just his work; Jack is -- well, a contributing factor to his very identity, as she sees it. He wonders what she really thinks about that. Her brother the fancy-boy? Does she expect him to mince? Or maybe she's just baffled by it, like he was, like he still is, and hasn't formed any conclusions.

Well, neither has he, not really, and she hasn't asked about Jack anyhow. But she has asked about Torchwood, which is the bigger, more dangerous secret.

He leans back. "Here's an idea," he says, turning his glass on the table, turning and turning. "You tell me first."

"Tell you first?"

"About Torchwood," he says. He can hear Jack's voice saying his words, knows he's maybe picked up too much from Jack. "Tell me what you think you know about Torchwood. Then I'll tell."

Rhiannon looks suspicious, then thoughtful as the idea takes hold.

"Well, people don't talk about it, do they?" she asks. "You remember when we were little kids, I used to make you behave by shouting that Torchwood'd come and get you in the night?"

Ianto has no memory of this at all, which bothers him.

"It's like the Easter Bunny, only if once in a while you saw the Easter Bunny running round, dropping eggs," Rhiannon continues. "Most people don't want to believe in it. They don't want to think about it. So they put it out of their heads. I don't want to think about it, but I haven't any choice, have I? My brother's in the secret police. The Cardiff Gestapo."

"Oh, come on, Rhi," Ianto says, and realises she's baited him right into it. He can't just let her talk about what she thinks; he's got to defend Torchwood, and that means reacting when she calls him the fucking _Gestapo._

"But really though."

"But really though," he mirrors back at her. She looks annoyed. "What do you actually know? How does it work? Who's afraid of it?"

"Everyone," she says. "Stop talking about it as if you aren't in it."

"I want to know," he says, mulish, feeling like the fifteen-year-old who had to push back every time Dad pushed him.

"The police can't control them. You," she adds, just to drive in the blade a bit. "You go where you like, you do what you please. You said it's chasing down nutters with bombs, but you take whoever you like and sometimes they don't come back, or they come back...missing things. Sometimes people die and Torchwood clears away the bodies."

Ianto nods. "So why don't the police stop us? There's only four of us. What's stopping them throwing us in cuffs?"

Rhiannon gives him a level and equally stubborn look. "You tell me."

"Think about it," Ianto coaxes.

"I don't _want_ to," she blurts. "I don't want to think about you with a gun, doing God knows what to people, you and your posh friends. I don't want to think about my baby brother being the kind of man who does things like that. Takes people away. Hides things. Doesn't answer to anyone. You think I want that for you?"

Ianto can't say he was expecting it, but it's not precisely a surprise, either. He knows how people look at him when they find out he's Torchwood, and not just local plod either. Strangers see him climbing out of the SUV to do the shopping for the week, and they whisper and pass him wide. Once he forgot and wore his gun out to dinner, and the waiter who served him nearly wet himself.

"Nobody stops us," Ianto tries, very slowly and carefully, "because even the police, somewhere near the top, know what we do. People aren't scared of us because we take people away in the night. We don't actually do that." _Not very often, anyway, and never without cause._ "People don't like to think about us because we're the dustmen. We do the dirty things nobody else wants to do or know about. But we do it to protect Cardiff."

"And what is it Cardiff needs protecting from?" Rhiannon demands, and Ianto raises his eyes to hers.

He's not sure what she sees in them. He knows what passes through his mind in that moment: weariness, longing for peace, memories of a dozen cases gone bad and half a dozen cases that at least nobody died on. Grief. And the knowledge that nobody, nobody but Torchwood, wants the answer to the question of what Cardiff needs protecting from.

Nor does Rhiannon. She sees enough, anyway, and pours him another drink. They sit in silence, a buffer of time to let the unanswered questions die.

"So," she says, coy now, "this Jack of yours."

"He's not mine," Ianto mumbles, turning away.

"That's not how it looked when we took Mica out for dinner," she replies. "Couldn't keep his hands off, could he? Under the table and all."

Ianto can feel a flush in his cheeks. "That's just Jack. He flirts with everything."

"Well, I notice he didn't have a hand on _Johnny's_ thigh," Rhiannon says, and Ianto chokes on his drink. Jack was sitting between Ianto and Johnny while they ate, and it's true even Jack wasn't indiscreet enough to try anything on Johnny Davies, even in play. "But...you had girlfriends...?"

Ianto shrugs. "Yeah."

"And now a boyfriend."

"We don't really call it that."

"What do you call it then?" she asks, mischief glittering in her eyes. "Male bonding with orgasms?"

"Rhiannon!" He's aghast, though actually on occasion that's not far wrong.

"Well, if you're going to be all cryptic about it, I'll have to fill in the blanks, won't I?"

Ianto fiddles with his drink. "It's complicated. He's my boss. And...my, you know. First. I don't really...he doesn't like to put labels on things."

Rhi narrows her eyes. Ianto knows how it sounds to other people. It's difficult to put into words the difference between Jack and some arsehole who espouses some kind of "freedom from commitment" policy that really translates into "freedom from having to care about people". Arguably, these days, Jack's brand of fidelity is stronger than an average person's; at least he doesn't pretend that Ianto's the only person he finds desirable. There's a strange sort of liberation in knowing Jack could have anyone but chooses to have him.

But he knows what people think when they hear it, and what they think of him.

"Is he good to you, though?" Rhiannon asks, which surprises him. He sees her eyes drift to a half-healed scrape on his cheek, souvenir of the last time they'd been Weevil hunting. "Not like Iewan down the street?"

When Ianto was ten, "Iewan down the street" had, quite famously, been beaten to death by his wife when she decided to pay him back for many years of black eyes and broken bones all in a single go, after the first time he raised his hand to their daughter. Everyone knew, and no-one talked about it, not least because closing ranks against the cops meant Iewan's murder went _mysteriously unsolved_.

"God, no," he said, gesturing at his cheek. "Peril of the job."

"The job where you mostly do paperwork," Rhi says drily.

Ianto flinches. "Well, we do a lot of paperwork. But not only paperwork."

"So, you and this Jack. Are you serious?" she asks. Ianto hesitates, considering. Are they? For Jack, possibly they are, he has the impression this is above and beyond normal Harkness flings. For him...

It's not as though they're going to pick out china patterns and rent a hall or something. But Ianto has very realistic expectations about his lifespan with Torchwood, and part of those expectations are that, barring any massive screwups on his part, Jack will be the last person he is ever in love with, the person he spends the rest of his probably rather short life with.

"I think so," he says, teasing apart two layers of cardboard on the pizza box with a thumbnail.

"Well, I suppose you could do worse," Rhiannon pronounces, and Ianto laughs. "Makes a bit of cash, does he?"

"I pay for my own suits, Rhi."

"Explains the pink shirts," she says slyly.

"Oh, god..."

"No, Ianto, come on," she soothes, putting a hand on his. "Promise I won't tease. So long as you're happy."

He nods, wondering how true it is, but Rhiannon always had a good sense of what was important and what was just his childish self-importance. She must know how desperately difficult it is to have a thing, and have no name to put to it, and not know how to explain it.

He realises, with a sense of relief, that they are done with the Words. Rhiannon has what she needs to know, and Ianto isn't a wreck on the floor, so it can't have gone too badly.

"I need to talk to you about London," Rhiannon says, and Ianto's happy, rather accomplished feeling fades immediately. London wasn't on the table for discussion, not so far as he was aware. Torchwood and Jack, yes; London, no.

"I know why you didn't say," Rhiannon continues, not quite looking at him. "Maybe you couldn't, I dunno. But that was big, Ianto. You don't just walk away from things like that."

No, you stagger away, dragging your dying girlfriend with you.

"Did you get help? Did you talk to anyone?" she asks.

"They had therapists," he says dully, because they were well-intentioned but useless; he couldn't even tell them the reality of his situation, he'd had to talk in code. Much more helpful, if rather like grasping hot pokers barehanded, was Jack's swift, efficient, and precise process for rebuilding him during his month's suspension. "After Lisa died I talked to Jack about it sometimes."

"Ah," Rhiannon says knowingly. Ianto frowns at her. "Talked to Jack, eh? He's good at comforting the bereaved?"

God, it had been so unlike that as to be hilarious, but at the same time Rhiannon has a point he hasn't considered before.

"Maybe," he concedes.

"But you're all right now. I mean. You don't have flashbacks or get the shakes or anything."

Ianto shakes his head. "It leaves a mark, but -- yeah, I'm all right, much as I can be."

There's a noise from the front hall, and they look up; Ianto specifically had Rhiannon come to his for this talk, so they wouldn't be disturbed by Johnny or the kids, and so that she could see his home -- lots of dishes in the sink, all right, and some dead bugs on the windowsill, but his own place, tidy and well-kept for the most part.

The door opens and slams, and there's a rattle of keys in the dish on the hall table. Rhiannon looks at Ianto with a smug, knowing grin, and Ianto rubs his forehead. Of all the nights for Jack to decide to come over, it had to be this one. Maybe he has the place bugged.

"Ianto?" Jack's voice is strident in the foyer.

"In here," Ianto calls ruefully, while Rhiannon shakes with silent giggles. "Drinking. Heavily."

"Oh?" Jack appears in the doorway, coat off, unbuckling his belt so he can shed the Webley's holster. He looks up and sees Rhiannon and freezes.

"Mrs. Davies," he says, his smile a fraction too slow to be _entirely_ real, though the delight at seeing her isn't faked. Ianto can tell this about Jack by now. "Pleasure and not business, I hope?"

"Just having some words with our Ianto," she says, and Ianto can tell she's trying to be disapproving, but when Jack puts his hand out she takes it automatically. Jack bows over to kiss it. Ianto rolls his eyes.

"I can go," Jack says, not to Ianto but to her, deferring to Older Sister.

"Nah. We've sorted it, haven't we?" she asks Ianto, who nods. "I should be off home anyway."

"I'll call you a cab," Ianto says, and the next few minutes are a flurry of goodbyes and love-yous and come-anytimes and call-mes, with Jack hovering in the background, calmly chewing on a piece of pizza. Once Rhi's safely in the cab and Ianto's pressed fare into the driver's hand over her protests, Ianto returns to his flat and sits down again. He pours himself another drink, no tonic this time. Jack's eagerly working on finishing off the pizza.

"So, you work everything out?" Jack asks around a mouthful of food.

"Mostly," Ianto says. "She wanted to know what Torchwood does. Then she didn't."

"Wise woman."

"Hm. She wanted to know if I was all right after London."

Jack stops chewing.

"I never told her, you know. That I was there. It's fine now," Ianto adds, waving a hand dismissively.

"Which 'it' are we talking?" Jack asks. Ianto shrugs.

"All of it, I guess."

Jack looks like he doesn't quite believe him, and yeah, perhaps London itself isn't fine, perhaps that bit of him won't ever be fine, but it's only a bit of him.

In less intoxicated hindsight he'll probably regret saying the next words out of his mouth. "She wanted to know about you. Me and you."

"Well, we're a fascinating pair," Jack replies, but there's a hint of worry in his face. "Anything in particular?"

Ianto gestures to the scrape on his cheek. "She asked if you were beating me."

Jack chokes on his food, actually so badly he has to thump himself on the chest, eyes streaming by the time he gasps clean air in. It's unsettlingly like watching him revive.

"I -- have never -- " Jack wheezes, and Ianto realises half of his incoherence is from anger. "I would never -- "

"I know that, but she didn't," Ianto steps in, gives him time to recover. Jack coughs a few times. "She knows now."

"Well, fucking great, because nobody's going to go around thinking I _hit you_ ," Jack says. Ianto is amused that he's too enraged even to add anything about _unless you were into it._

"She asked if we were serious," Ianto continues, because what the hell, Jack's already furious that someone thinks he abuses his lovers. Jack, wiping tears of asphyxiation from his eyes, looks up.

"And you said...?" he prompts.

"I said I thought so. She said I could do worse," Ianto replies neutrally. He slides a sidelong look at Jack, whose face is unreadable. They stay that way for a while, Jack gulping in air, Ianto trying to read things Jack has had decades of practice at hiding.

Finally, Ianto stands and comes around to Jack's chair, pulling him up out of it, because there's no point to it all, is there? Rhiannon's satisfied, Ianto's safe, Jack's here. The rest can sod off.

They kiss -- deep, yes, but gentle, not let's-fuck-right-here kissing or gotta-go-see-you-later kissing. The kind of kiss you give someone you suspect might be around for a while. Jack's arms are locked loosely around his waist, Jack's shoulders are broad and perfect under his hands. Ianto finds, to his surprise, that he's happy just standing there kissing Jack, with a warm weight in his chest.

Jack pulls back a little to nuzzle affectionately against his cheek, lips grazing just the corner of his mouth, a chuckle huffed against his skin when he smiles.

"Do we need to sort this out?" Jack asks, tightening his arms a little. "We can. If you need a name for it -- "

"No," Ianto says, because honestly, he doesn't. Why, when he has Jack's warm body all pressed up against his, would he be upset because he didn't have a name for it? That seems very much to be missing the point.

"Good. Come to bed," Jack says.

Ianto goes. This is his life; Rhiannon and Jack can see into it, but no one can see all of it, which is just as well. It might not be neatly sorted, but it's as sorted as it needs to be.


End file.
